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Lithuanian Pleads Guilty To Stealing $100 Million From Google, Facebook (bleepingcomputer.com)
schwit1 writes: Evaldas Rimasauskas, a Lithuanian citizen, concocted a brazen scheme that allowed him to bilk Facebook and Google out of more than $100 million. The crime defrauded Google of $23 million and Facebook of $99 million. Rimasauskas committed the crimes between 2013 to 2015, an indictment was issued in 2017, and he was formally indicted Wednesday in New York after he pleaded guilty to wire fraud, aggravated identity theft, and three counts of money laundering.
"As Evaldas Rimasauskas admitted today, he devised a blatant scheme to fleece U.S. companies out of over $100 million, and then siphoned those funds to bank accounts around the globe," said U.S. Attorney Geoffrey S. Berman in a DoJ press release. How did he do it? The indictment reveals that he simply billed the companies for the amounts and they paid the bills. Rimasauskas was able to trick company employees into wiring the money to multiple bank accounts that he controlled and had set up in institutions in Cyprus, Lithuania, Hungary, Slovakia, and Latvia.
"As Evaldas Rimasauskas admitted today, he devised a blatant scheme to fleece U.S. companies out of over $100 million, and then siphoned those funds to bank accounts around the globe," said U.S. Attorney Geoffrey S. Berman in a DoJ press release. How did he do it? The indictment reveals that he simply billed the companies for the amounts and they paid the bills. Rimasauskas was able to trick company employees into wiring the money to multiple bank accounts that he controlled and had set up in institutions in Cyprus, Lithuania, Hungary, Slovakia, and Latvia.
My uncle owns a business that sells a lot of new exercise/gym equipment usually to new gyms opening up. He's probably the richest one in the family.
But whenever he gets any invoices in the mail or by email or fax, he gets the secretary to pay it, no matter what it is. When I was upgrading his computers for him I started flipping through the invoices he was getting and there was all this weird stuff even some saying it was from an Egyptian embassy and some from Nigeria (not large bills, maybe only $250-$300 here and there). When I asked him about it he said there is no way they ever did business with them "but maybe that's just how a couple of our local suppliers billed us, just don't worry about it."
Lots of (medium+) businesses will simply just pay invoices because the odds of receiving a fake one are so statistically low.
yeah buddy
Exonerated!
There's nothing like the smell of coerced false confession in the morning!
It's interesting to see the big guys getting hit with these scams..
In our medium sized single-store retail business, we've seen a huge surge in the last few years in false invoicing from companies we've never dealt with.
For example, you'll get a $424.93 invoice from Artin Technology Consulting Inc. or a $129.00 invoice from Joe's Plumbing, with an address close to where you are, but a head office/billing address out of the country or something. It may even be a real company but with an altered address to send payment to. The services appear to be normal things that you buy. I've often wondered if they dumpster dive to farm data.
We've caught our accountants almost paying the bills due to how similar they look to normal business expenses and overhead for everything from tech services to building maintenance..
They often have purchase order numbers and authorization information from a general manager or something (probably they harvested those from our website's 'contact' section, or simply called in and asked who the general manager is..).
Really all you have to do is keep a proper database of vendors and services, only send payment to addresses on file, and only add a vendor to a database when you're damn sure they're real, and you're good to go.
Weird unknown bill? Screw it, just wait 30 days until any sane company would be hunting you down trying to charge you interest. If it's a scam they probably wont bother you again.
The guy could have stopped after a few weeks and enjoy a few millions bucks abroad. No he had to want more and more. Until he's caught.
Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
Is wire fraud? I guess that means they will arrest time warner representitives for sending me false statements. Or are there two sets of laws? One for me and one for big soulless tax evading corporations.
He was smart enough not to set up an account in Nigeria. That would have been a giveaway.
Seriously though, Google and Facebook can tell you what you had for breakfast three years ago, on any Wednesday: but they are clueless as to whom they do business with. Probably because it would involve "tracking" their own transactions in the same way...
We aren't just the product, we're the targets.
One should be naive to believe that this could function for years without internal assistance and sharing.
Uncle Sugar has paid for so many back braces and scooters.... It shouldn't be possible to swing a cat without hitting one, but somehow I never have. (Cat loves it I tell you.)
If your company is in the EU, you can use Digiteal to receive and pay your bills while avoiding fraud. In order to send a bill through Digiteal, a company must go through a bank-level security onboarding. The identity of the registrar is also checked. Then, when a bill is presented for payment, the payment details are cross-checked and the creditor bank account is also checked. This way, you can be sure that you are paying to the right bank account and not to the one of a fraudster. Security in Finance shouldn't be a luxury. Ask your providers to send you bills through Digiteal...
The government continuously sends me tax assessments for things I don't own, like non existent houses. Yet I have to pay end up in jail. If they can do it, why can't this guy? :p
0x or or snor perron?!
Billing Google and Facebook for my loss of privacy because of how far their tendrils spread across the web seems pretty reasonable to me.
They'll be getting my bill for legal services in catching this guy
He sent them a bill, they paid it.
What's the crime?
In light of the exploits of this man, and those Americans involved in the College Admissions scandal, we should now conclude that they have surpassed any fraud committed by those doing 419 Fraud in Nigeria. Indeed these individuals have surpassed them. Thus no one should defame Nigerians anymore when it comes to fraud.
I've seen this in Romania as far back as 2001. A legally established company scoured through Yellow Pages and sent thousands... of parcels containing... Romanian Flags at inflated prices
We used to have this problem in the US. The post office issued a decision that any unsolicited good sent through the mail became property of the recipient. This mostly stopped it.
I can only imagine how news of this will increase the number of fake bills showing up at the accounts payable departments at Google and Facebook.
The Russians have won. They have made the world a cesspool of distrust, greed, fear and hate.
I've had a personal domain since back in the days of dialup. It's nice not to have to send out a slew of emails each time I changed ISP.
In the past month, I've gotten a bunch of fake domain renewal notices in my spam folder. Is this a new thing?
I'm not repeating myself
I'm an X window user; I'm an ex-Windows user
employees working for those companies probably have to jump through hoops to get their expense reports approved, meanwhile random people just send invoices which get approved and paid without question.
On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero.